Brussels
\nPrime Minister Theresa May said she would be returning to Brussels on Saturday to hammer out an outline of Britain\u2019s future ties with the European Union after her meeting with the head of the bloc\u2019s executive on Wednesday failed to bridge the gaps.<\/p>\n
May met European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker for about an hour and a half to try to win commitments aimed at helping her appease rebels at home opposed to her draft Brexit treaty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were some remaining issues which we have discussed,\u201d May said afterwards. \u201cI will be returning on Saturday for further meetings, including again with President Juncker to discuss how we can ensure that we can conclude this process.\u201d With just over four months before Britain\u2019s departure, May is trying to finalise an outline of future relations before a summit of EU leaders on Sunday due to endorse the Brexit accord.<\/p>\n
Raising the stakes, EU diplomats said they had been told that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was not willing to come on Sunday for any more talks, meaning a text must be ready beforehand.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday night, May spoke to Sanchez and \u201cthere had been good engagement between the UK, the Government of Spain and the Government of Gibraltar,\u201d May\u2019s office said, adding that the UK and Gibraltar \u201clooked forward to these discussions continuing.\u201d May said negotiators from both Britain and the European Union would continue working on the text. \u201cI believe we have been able to give sufficient direction for them to be able to resolve those remaining issues,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the European Commission said \u201cvery good progress\u201d was made at May\u2019s meeting with Juncker: \u201cWork is continuing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diplomats in Brussels said EU states\u2019 concerns over fishing rights and future trade ties had largely been addressed in the political declaration on the EU-UK future ties that would form a package with the legally binding divorce deal, meaning Spain\u2019s concerns were the final issue to be settled.<\/p>\n
Sanchez has demanded assurances that the future of Gibraltar would be settled through direct talks with Madrid.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this is not solved by Sunday, Spain, a pro-European government, will unfortunately have to vote \u2018No\u2019,\u201d Sanchez said at a news conference in Valladolid with his Portuguese counterpart.<\/p>\n
Many in Brussels thought Sanchez was trying to score points with voters at home before a Dec. 2 local election in the southern Andalusia region. They said the issue could be solved by the leaders and warned Madrid not to put the whole Brexit agreement at risk.<\/p>\n
As an olive branch to Brexit campaigners in Britain, May was seeking to include their proposed technological solutions to keep the border open on the island of Ireland. The EU has previously dismissed these ideas as unrealistic at this stage.<\/p>\n
May\u2019s finance minister, Philip Hammond, said Britain\u2019s parliament needed to back her deal or risk either seriously damaging the economy or jeopardising Brexit altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brussels Prime Minister Theresa May said she would be returning to Brussels on Saturday to hammer out an outline of Britain\u2019s future ties with the European Union after her meeting with the head of the bloc\u2019s executive on Wednesday failed to bridge the gaps. May met European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker for about an hour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47992,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47990\/revisions\/47992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}